


You’re the One Thing (I Can't Get Enough Of)

by doctorbuffypotterlock79



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Angst, Cheesy romance, Dancing, Established Relationship, F/F, Happy Ending, Lesbian AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 08:27:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21389128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorbuffypotterlock79/pseuds/doctorbuffypotterlock79
Summary: Brooke has messed up in her and Vanessa’s relationship, but she’s going to do whatever it takes to fix it
Relationships: Brooke Lynn Hytes/Vanessa Vanjie Mateo
Comments: 14
Kudos: 51





	You’re the One Thing (I Can't Get Enough Of)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [writworm42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/writworm42/gifts).

> Writ requested a fic where Brooke has messed up and makes it up to Vanessa with candlelight and looking pretty and a slow dance, and Writ is awesome and I love them so I had to. I hope it’s somewhat like what you imagined, and I hope you enjoy! Please leave some feedback if you’d like! Title from “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” from _Dirty Dancing_.

Night has fallen, a dark blue sheet over the world, when Brooke finally exits the conference room massaging her temples, ears still ringing from a board member’s yelling. 

She pulls out her phone on the way to her car, stomach growling with the knowledge that she’s consumed nothing but a cup of coffee all day. 15 minutes and she’ll be home, eating dinner and kissing Vanessa—

There’s 5 voicemails and almost 30 texts, all from Vanessa. 

Oh no. The phone shakes in Brooke’s hand, and it’s a good thing she hasn’t eaten because her stomach lurches. 

Did something happen? Is she hurt? Is she sick? Her mind is overtaken by images of Vanessa trapped and bleeding in her car, or fighting for her life in the hospital, or scared because of something at work...she forces herself to breathe and opens up the messages, heart pounding.

_Brooke _

_Where are you? _

_You’re supposed to be out early today remember?_

_Why are you late? _

_Brooke are you okay? You’re an hour late and I’m scared _

_Brooke? _

_Are you okay?_

_You’re almost two hours late_

_I just called your office they said you’re in a meeting. Did you seriously forget to leave early for tonight? _

_Whatever. Obviously your job is more important_

Oh shit. Brooke’s heart creeps into her throat and the guilt slams into her like a tractor. Somehow, in between her rushed cup of coffee for breakfast and the two morning meetings and skipping lunch to perfect her presentation and the presentation itself and this meeting, she completely forgot that she had to get out early. 

It’s her and Vanessa’s third anniversary. 

And Brooke forgot about it.

\---

_“Will you just come, Brooke? You might actually enjoy yourself, you know,” Nina argues. _

_“At 80’s music night at the Rainforest Bar? Do I even need to dignify that with a response?” She shoots Nina the most scathing look she can muster. _

_“Okay, so maybe it’s not your exact idea of a good time, but please just come? You might meet someone. You haven’t been in a relationship since undergrad. I worry about you, Brooke.” It’s a clear guilt trip, but there’s such sincerity in Nina’s expression that she finds herself agreeing. _

_“Fine. But if I don’t have a good time, which I won’t, I get to pick the next movie for movie night.”_

_“Okay. And if you do have a good time, which you will, I get to pick the movie.”_

_“Deal.”_

\---

Brooke opens the back door and enters a fog of doom and misery in the kitchen. 

“Look who decided to show up.”

Vanessa sits stiffly at the kitchen table, a murderous gleam in her eyes. She’s still in her flowing gold dress that she saves for special occasions. The table is bare, and Brooke realizes with a pang that Vanessa had given up on her and put it all away, removed all traces of the night they were supposed to have, with their fancy dresses and fancy dinner and candles and champagne. 

Like she could no longer bear to sit and look at the broken promise Brooke had made of their night. 

There is nothing she can say that will make this better, but she has to try. Vanessa deserves that much at least. 

“Vanessa, I’m so sorry. I got caught up at work--”

“You’re _always_ caught up at work!”

She can tell from Vanessa’s rage that this has been building for a while--and not without reason. Brooke has been coming home later than usual the past few weeks, falling asleep at her home desk as she reviews graphs and charts. She’s been telling Vanessa that things will be normal again once the quarter ends, but what if--fear grips her heart--what if her and Vanessa aren’t still her and Vanessa by the time it does?

“They scheduled a late meeting and it was mandatory--”

“Of course it was! And you know what? You wouldn’t have even been there for it if you left early like you promised!” Vanessa leaps to her feet, betrayal and anger enabling her to tower over Brooke. 

“I know. I’m sorry. It was a shitty thing to do and I--”

“_One_ night I asked you to get out early. _One!_” She laughs bitterly. “Sometimes I think you like that job more than me.”

“Ness, I--”

“You don’t get to call me Ness right now.” Brooke detects tears chasing after the fury in Vanessa’s voice. “Why don’t you sleep at your desk tonight. You love sleeping there anyway.” 

She storms up the stairs and Brooke restrains herself from following. Vanessa’s anger is like a landmine; you might take out everything in a 5-mile radius if you approach her when she’s still seething. As much as Brooke wants to race after her and talk and apologize until she’s repaired this, she knows she’ll only create more damage if she goes when the fire of rage is still burning through her wife, and she’s caused enough destruction already. 

She finds their dessert for tonight, chocolate-strawberry tarts from their favorite coffee shop--where they had their first official date and Brooke was so nervous she poured sugar all over the table instead of in her mug--in the garbage, another casualty of Brooke’s forgetfulness. 

Brooke steps into her home office, her appetite suddenly gone, a hard lump in her stomach now. She drops into her desk chair, still in her stiff pantsuit, because she doesn’t deserve the release of taking it off. She watches the sky brighten as it passes from dusk to dawn, a bright pink of new possibilities and fulfilled promises, as she formulates a plan. 

She’s going to make this right. 

\---

_Nina hums along to_ “Africa” _at the table they’re huddled around, and Brooke is flooded with guilt for making Nina stand here with her miserable self when she knows Nina would rather be on the dance floor. _

_“Go dance,” Brooke insists. “Have fun. Don’t worry about me.” It takes another few minutes of coaxing and reassuring Nina that she’ll be fine before Nina sprints to the dance floor, immediately drawn in with a group of women. _

_Brooke sighs and sips at her drink, the oversized paper umbrella almost taking her eye out. She shouldn’t be here; she should be reviewing her presentation for Monday, making sure she’s caught every mistake. Maybe she could hole up in the bathroom and go over the notes on her phone. She sighs again. Why couldn’t she ever just let go and have fun like Nina encouraged her to?_

_“Hey there,” a rough voice surfaces at her side. “You okay? You lookin’ kinda stressed, Mami.”_

_Brooke looks up at the most beautiful woman she’s ever seen, brilliant white teeth exposed in a full grin, a jungle cat on the prowl, brown eyes bright under the neon lights, hair brushed back off her soft, smooth face. _

_“I--I’m fine,” Brooke manages, no longer sure how to form words. _

_The woman winks. “You sure are.” She bats her eyelashes and Brooke has to grip the table just to stay upright. _

_“I’m Vanessa,” the woman says._

\---

Brooke calls in sick to work and is out the door before the sun is up the next morning, before Vanessa rolls out of bed to take her shower. Brooke can’t help but smile as she pictures the nest Vanessa’s hair is in the morning, how she always tries to convince Brooke to stay in the shower with her. All she can do is hope she didn’t mess up enough to lose those things. 

The grocery store is nearly deserted this early in the morning, which is good because Brooke doesn’t want to know what she looks like, in yesterday’s clothes, hair up in a ponytail, running on a rough hour of sleep and not enough coffee. She shoves through the exhaustion and focuses. 

Vanessa likes Caesar salad with extra croutons, she likes potatoes fried until they crunch, and she likes steak completely well done because any pink in it freaked her out. Brooke can barely make toast without setting off the smoke detector, but as she roams down endless seas of cans and boxes, her sleep-deprived brain declares that she can make all of these things for tonight. 

She is going to give Vanessa the night she deserves, because Vanessa is the greatest person Brooke has ever known. She is somehow bold and brash yet kind and thoughtful, always armed with the right words for any situation. She can loosen the threads that have Brooke wound tight with stress over work conferences, make her laugh after a long day, nestle perfectly in her arms at night. The pain in Brooke’s chest is only growing as she thinks of the absolute wreck she made of everything. 

How could she have forgotten the anniversary of the day she stood under a canopy of orange leaves and slid her ring on Vanessa’s finger and vowed to love her forever? Has her love for Vanessa lessened over the years? No, she knows that isn’t true. Her heart still speeds up every time Vanessa smiles at her, their hands still fly together like lovesick teenagers. She knows, even in moments when Vanessa has steam coming out of her ears after work or is frowning at her for editing presentations in bed, that she loves Vanessa more than ever. She has to show Vanessa how much she loves her in case the message has been lost lately with all her deadlines and meetings and stress. 

Her next stop is the coffee shop to get new tarts, only to be told that they make those every other day. Brooke clenches her fists so tight she nearly bends her phone in half. She has to have these tarts. They’re Vanessa’s favorite, and nothing else will do. Vanessa should get to have her favorite dessert all the time, and especially now, but Brooke walks out the door with a polite _thank you_, because what’s she going to do? Get down on her knees and sob and beg the bored twenty-something behind the counter to make the tarts so she can save her marriage? (The thought does cross her mind).

Brooke gets in her car, pulls up a recipe, and heads back to the store. 

\---

_Vanessa is tiny, barely at Brooke’s shoulders even in her sleek black heels, but with a voice and personality that make her double in size. Brooke easily lets her take the lead on the conversation, and by the time she finds out Vanessa is a schoolteacher a few years younger than her, Brooke forgets to be afraid, forgets about her presentation Monday, forgets everything but Vanessa’s eyes and smile across from her. _

_Brooke doesn’t even notice that hours have passed listening to Vanessa’s stories of what goes on in the teachers’ lounge at school, the DJ cycling through Madonna and Cyndi Lauper and George Michael, until the bartender announces last call and the soft strains of a familiar song from one of her and Nina’s favorite movies ring out._

‘Now I’ve had the time of my life…’

_Vanessa squeals. “I love this song! Dance with me?”_

_She lets Vanessa pull her on to the dance floor, the brunette telling her over the music about how she and her friends all watched the movie for the first time at a sleepover when they were 12, how everyone drooled over Johnny but she couldn’t take her eyes off Penny, and by the end of the sleepover she knew she had a thing for blondes and did_ not _have a thing for men. _

_Brooke just listens to that gravelly voice, feels the warmth of Vanessa’s body pulsing next to her, and when the song reaches its climax, she can’t resist leaning down and whispering into Vanessa’s ear. _

_“I can do this, you know. The lift, I mean.” Brooke clarifies at Vanessa’s confused expression. _

_“You’re shitting me!”_

_“I’m not.” Brooke grins. “I took dance lessons for 14 years, I know how to do it.”_

_“You wanna come back to my place and prove it?”_

\---

The first thing she sees when she gets home is Vanessa’s coffee mug in the sink, peeking out at her like a ray of sunlight. 

The mug Brooke got her as a joke when they started dating, with a chalkboard and an apple on it proclaiming Vanessa to be the World’s Best Teacher. The mug she had plucked a ring out of the night she proposed to Vanessa, a night filled with happy tears and kisses and breathless repeatings of _we’re getting married_. The mug that Vanessa insisted be the first thing they unpacked when they moved into their new house. 

Vanessa leaves the mug in the sink every morning and Brooke washes it every night when she gets home from work, relishing the calm motions and the memories of late breakfasts and kisses sweet with coffee and maple syrup bursting from the mug’s surface. 

If Vanessa was willing to drink out of this morning after everything that happened, maybe there’s hope, and Brooke rinses the mug with a smile. 

Then she lays out her supplies and gets to work. 

Brooke can’t cook. At all. And she doesn’t mean it in the modest way people do when they don’t want to call attention to their talents; she means it in the way that Vanessa reaches for the fire extinguisher anytime Brooke gets within a foot of the stove. But she has double of everything she’ll need and seven hours until Vanessa gets home, and today is as good a day as ever to be optimistic. 

Brooke slices and stirs and mixes and it distracts her from the fact that it’s radio silence on her phone all day. No cat videos or pictures of Vanessa at her desk with the funniest Snapchat filter she could find or an accusatory _so guess what this hoe at work did today_ with the promise of a wild story that she would hear at dinner. It’s what she expected and it’s what she deserves. Hell, it’s probably _more_ than she deserves; she wouldn’t blame Vanessa for sending her angry texts and screaming voicemails. 

After a long shower, a thick layer of aloe vera over the small burn on her arm, three Minnie Mouse Band-Aids on the cuts on her fingers, one batch of tarts so deformed they could be a viral Pinterest fail, a once-white T-shirt that she doubts even bleach can save, and a salad dressing incident that required cleaning the ceiling, Brooke curls her hair, applies her makeup, and slips on her elegant black dress, the one with the plunging neckline that Vanessa likes because then she can put her hands all over Brooke’s chest.

She lights candles to set the romantic mood (and also mask the odor from the first round of potatoes she burned), arranges deep red and soft white roses in a vase, and props up the portable speaker as Vanessa drives home from the after-school program she helps with, probably blasting Rihanna and singing along with the windows open. 

Brooke starts the music as she hears the lock click, preparing herself for the moment of truth. 

—-

_Vanessa is barely in the door before she has the song cued up on her phone, pulling Brooke into the living room with a wide smile. _

_Vanessa slips her arms around Brooke’s waist, rocking her into a slow dance as the first verses of the song play out. _

_The song builds to the lift, and Vanessa bites her lip and glances up at Brooke nervously. _

_“You’re not gonna drop me, are you?” she questions. _

_“I won’t drop you, I promise. I got you.” Brooke has never made promises easy, Nina the only person to typically earn them, but it flies out so naturally she doesn’t question it, and she knows she will never break it. She’s got a good feeling in her gut about Vanessa, and Brooke wants to carve those words into stone._

_Vanessa nods, taking a few steps back before running at her, heels clicking on the floor, and Brooke settles her hands on Vanessa’s hips, going with the motion and lifting her high in the air. _

_“Holy shit, Brooke!” Vanessa shrieks above Brooke’s head. “I’m five-nothing, I never been this high! Well, except for that time my friend Silky made her ‘special’ cookies.”_

_Vanessa is quaking with laughter above her, legs flailing, and Brooke laughs and lowers Vanessa to the ground, hands still sturdy on her hips, and Brooke is thinking she might just leave them there forever. What does she really need her hands for anyway?_

_“I bet you use that trick on all the girls,” Vanessa accuses, still breathless, a smile between her flushed cheeks._

_“Never,” Brooke says truthfully. “Never met anyone I liked enough to do it with.”_

_And then their lips meet, and that good feeling spreads to Brooke’s entire body. She may actually burst into flame, and she lifts Vanessa once more and carries her into--no, that’s the bathroom, Brooke unable to see anything but Vanessa--the bedroom, placing her down carefully and removing Vanessa’s dress. _

_They nestle into a breathless tangle, and there’s that feeling in Brooke’s stomach again. This time it’s telling her that this won’t be their last night together, that she’ll get to hold Vanessa close every night and wake up with sunlight glinting off Vanessa’s back every morning, kissing and laughing and getting pancake crumbs from breakfasts in bed all over the sheets. _

_She lets the feeling carry her off into sleep. _

_Vanessa makes waffles the next morning, and Brooke leaves with another kiss and a new contact in her phone, Vanessa’s name followed by a heart and dancing woman emojis. _

_Brooke gets two texts that afternoon. _

_The first is from Vanessa asking if she wants to go for coffee tomorrow. The second is from Nina stating that they’ll be watching_ Mulan _for their next movie night_. 

—-

Etta James’s voice fills the kitchen as Vanessa steps inside, Brooke strategically arranging a playlist with all Vanessa’s favorite love songs, most from their wedding, when they spun around together and neither one could do anything but smile because they were _married_. 

“Brooke?” Vanessa asks, her work bag slipping through her fingers and crashing to the floor. “You-you look so beautiful, and the music and the flowers...and you cooked?” She looks at the table in wonder and bites her lip the way she does when Brooke knows she’s trying not to smile. 

“Happy anniversary,” Brooke says. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about yesterday. I know that really hurt you, and I wanted to give you the anniversary you deserve, because you mean the world to me.”

“Brooke…” she’s not hiding her smile anymore, and her eyes are starting to tear up. 

Brooke takes a deep breath, holding herself back from running to Vanessa just in case. “I love you, Vanessa. These have been the best three years of my life, and I still love you just as much as I did the first day. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I’m going to work harder to show you that. I won’t be late at the office anymore, and I won’t be doing work stuff when I could be with you. Because you’re the most important thing in my life.”

Vanessa is in her arms the next second, breathing soft _I love you’s_ into Brooke’s chest. 

“I forgive you,” Vanessa whispers. “I love you so much, Brooke. I was so lonely last night, and I wanted to text you so many times today, and you did all this for me...this is the best anniversary ever.”

She plants a kiss on the top of Vanessa’s head, and then Vanessa runs upstairs and comes back in her gold dress, Brooke bursting into a grin and hit with that same flutter in her stomach like she did that first night, like she did the night they said their vows. 

_‘Unforgettable, that’s what you are…’_ Nat King Cole lulls over them as they start on dinner, Vanessa updating her on the case of the teachers’ lounge snack-stealer with today’s new evidence.

“I think the food is edible,” Brooke offers as a disclaimer. 

“It’s fine, baby,” Vanessa assures her, crunching on potatoes. “Hey, was that stain on the ceiling before?” she asks suddenly. “And why do you have so many Band-Aids on?”

“Just don’t ask,” Brooke blurts around her edible, actually-not-bad steak, grateful when “I’m Stone in Love With You” picks up and Vanessa’s attention shifts to another story. 

Brooke is washing the dishes from the tarts (a little crunchy around the edges, maybe, but altogether decent) when it comes on, like she timed it (which she had, stalling on the dish-scrubbing for just the right moment).

_‘Now I’ve had the time of my life…’_

“Brooke!” Vanessa squeals. “You didn’t!”

Brooke drops her washcloth in the sink and tugs Vanessa into the living room. “I did.”

The music sweeps around them and they join together in a slow dance, twirling around the living room laughing and smiling, that night years ago reflected in both of their eyes. 

Vanessa takes a step back as the time grows near, searching Brooke’s face for the answer to an unasked question. 

“I still got you,” Brooke promises. 

Her hands are on Vanessa’s hips seconds later, Vanessa screeching up in the air while Brooke laughs beneath her, fingers exuding a promise she first made years ago into Vanessa’s skin, the promise that she will always be there for her wife, no matter what. 

She brings Vanessa down into a kiss as the song fades out and melts into Diana Ross. Every kiss with Vanessa over the years has been special, but this one is fiery and desperate, filled with every need that went unanswered last night. Needs that Brooke won’t let be neglected again, because she isn’t going to put her job above her wife--her kind, passionate, fierce, loving wife--again. 

She carries Vanessa up the stairs and this time she doesn’t have to search for a bedroom in an unfamiliar apartment because now it’s _their_ bedroom, _their_ home. Their life. 

And she knows that tomorrow they’ll wake up and Vanessa will drink coffee out of that mug, and Brooke will wash it tomorrow night with a smile on her face, because even if the way she loves Vanessa has changed over the years, Brooke knows she has never loved her more.


End file.
